


Moving Day

by happyaspie



Series: Turning of the Tides [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Aged-Up Peter Parker, Anxious Peter Parker, College Student Peter Parker, Dorm Rooms, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Father-Son Relationship, MIT, Memories, Not Canon Compliant, Peter Parker Gets a Hug, Peter Parker Has a Family, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Photographs, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark is a Good Mentor, Tony Stark is helping, Tony loves his kid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-05-30 17:51:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19408321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/happyaspie/pseuds/happyaspie
Summary: Summer has come to an end and it's time for Peter to pack everything up and move on to the next chapter of his life.  He'd been hesitant at first but between some old photographs and Tony's encouragement, he knows he's ready.





	Moving Day

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a series that I highly recommend you read in order.

The last few days of summer had been mostly spent with May. She's taken a few days off in order for them to have some time together before their respective departures. There was no guarantee that Peter would be able to make it back home before she left for her first out of state assignment. It would only be three weeks into the first semester and Peter would still be acclimating to college life. No one had said it but everyone knew that it would be a bad idea to pull Peter away from his new routines before he'd had time to settle into them. 

The entirety of that last week of summer had been filled with every sentiment that encompassed entirety human emotion. He and May had started packing up their small apartment. Going through what would be stored and what would be sold when she left for her new adventure. It was on the last afternoon before he was to leave, that they had begun to sort through a huge box of pictures. The box held photographs of everything from recent events to images of himself as an infant being held in the arms of his father. That one, in particular, had been stirring. As he looked at it he realized that the man holding him was a stranger. He knew little more than his name and occupation. Then upon further inspection, he realized that really, he was a stranger to himself as well. He was no longer resembled the chubby, curly-headed baby he saw in the photo. He'd long ago learned how to temper the curls to make them fall flat and his body had since grown into something more muscular and nimble. 

Digging through the box he located another picture, this one was of himself in Ben's arms as a young child. He couldn't have been more than eight. The curls were still there but his face had thinned into that of a boy and he no longer had the round features of an infant. Absentmindedly running his hands along his jaw and cheekbones he sighed and started to rummage around looking for one more picture. He knew exactly which one he wanted. It was much more recent but it would finish off the collection that he had begun to compile in his hands. It took him a moment but he finally found it. The picture was from his graduation. Peter had run up behind Tony and lept onto the man's back grinning over his shoulder. They were both smiling with excitement. 

As he studied his own face he could see the mild resemblance he had to his father and uncle. They all had the same eyes and tamed waves of brown hair. He'd been told that he had his mother's chin and mouth but that wasn't what he was focusing on at the moment. Instead, what he saw was that the same smile he carried throughout the trilogy of photographs he'd accumulated. Smiling to match the pictures, he used his fingers to trace his lips and raised cheeks. Maybe the baby in the first picture wasn't a stranger after all. He'd just grown up. Between each of the lined up, images were gaps of unrepresented stretches of time. Stretches of time that held every significant change he'd been through in his life thus far. There had been significant losses and eminence gains between those photographs but his smile had remained unchanged. "Can I have these?", he mumbled towards May as he continued to examine them.

May had been too caught up in her own nostalgia to notice what Peter was doing until that moment. Taking a look past the box that was still sitting between them, she smiled. "Of, course, sweetie, they're yours. What are you going to do with them?" She had mostly asked out of curiosity. Peter had always been sentimental so the fact that he'd asked to keep a handful of old photos wasn't surprising. However, it didn't go unnoticed the few pictures he had chosen couldn't have been any more representative of every transformation that had taken place over the last eighteen years. 

"I'm not sure. I think I want to show them to Tony, though. Is that okay?", he asked already knowing that it was. He wasn't sure why he'd asked. May had long ago shared most of Peter's childhood photographs with Tony and Pepper. They'd even asked for a copy of an image Ben had taken of him at the Stark Expo when he was six. It sat on the mantel in the Stark's living room. 

"Of course it is. I think he'd like that.", May had reassured with a smile. 

Sighing, Peter shuffled the images into a neat stack and started to get up off the floor. "I should probably go double check that I have all of my stuff packed.", he'd said in order to excuse himself from the current project. He'd already double and triple checked everything. All but his bed and a small collection of clothing had been taped up in large boxes labeled as 'storage' or 'college'. The small handful of boxes labeled 'Stark' had already been carried to his bedroom in Manhattan where they sat in the closet waiting to be gone through.

On the night before he was to leave, Peter spent a good bit of time swinging around the city. At some point well after midnight, he scaled up the side of the large water tower located near the edge of the city. A place he often went to as a quiet place to think. Ever since his trip to the beach house with Tony, a week ago, he'd been slowly starting to accept everything that was to come. There were even moments where excitement would, once again, bubbled up within him at the thought of attending college classes. Sitting there looking over the city he smiled contentedly. He wasn't sure when he would be back in his suit and he was going to miss the air hitting his face and the whoosh of adrenaline that coursed through him as he flung himself from building to building but it was going to be okay. He'd be back.

The next morning felt like a rushed despite all of the pre-planning. He'd stayed out entirely too late and had a hard time waking up in the morning. May shook him awake just before Tony and Pepper were due to show up with breakfast and by the time he was showered and dressed, they were already there waiting for him. There were mixed emotions as he sat with his family for what could end up being the last time for a while. They laughed all through breakfast and Peter smiled through the good-byes, even when his throat tightened up with unshed tears. 

It wasn't until he and Tony were in the car together that he finally let them fall. "You good Pete?", Tony asked once they had reached the highway. When Peter only nodded in response, he reached over to gently pat his knee. "It's your big day. You're excited, right?"

"I am. Leaving was just harder than I thought it would be.", Peter quietly admitted, wiping away yet another stray tear. 

"You'll be back.", Tony reassured. 

"Yeah, but not to that apartment, Tony, and not with all of us together.", Peter replied because he was never going to see the inside of that apartment again. It had already been sold and shortly after May left for her new job, a new family would be moving it. It wasn't his home anymore. In fact, for all intents and purposes, his address now read Manhattan. 

"Not to that apartment, no.", Tony replied honestly. "...but we'll all be together again at some point, kid. May will come to visit ...and so will you."

"Yeah.", Peter agreed before forcing himself to smile again. "...and everyone's only a phone call away." After that, the car ride was better. Tony played his music entirely too loud and Peter would periodically turn it down to ask a question or comment on something he'd read on his phone. It felt a lot like the road trip they'd taken together just a couple of weeks back. Only this time it was a one way trip for him. Tony would be riding back on his own. At that thought, his heart skipped a beat and the anxiety he'd been pushing aside for the last several days suddenly washed over him like a bucket of ice water. 

After that, he grew quiet. Watching the numbers on the GPS slowly count down to their destination. As the number got smaller his desire to have the ability to stop time grew. "Tony?", Peter asked quietly to gain the man's attention. "Can we stop for lunch or something?"

Tony turned towards Peter for a brief moment and smiled because he knew an avoidance tactic when he saw one. "We're eating on campus after we get you all checked into your dorm, remember? I want to take you to that cafe on the Central Campus. They're supposed to have excellent cupcakes. It'll be fun, kid.", he said with enthusiasm. 

"Oh.", Peter replied. He didn't think that was actually going to work. Tony had been talking about taking him out to lunch on campus for weeks. Saying that he wanted to celebrate his kid's first official day as an MIT student. If Peter was being honest with himself, he wanted that too. Just not yet. The inside of the car was familiar and comfortable and he wasn't ready to leave it. "Well, I need to use the bathroom." It wasn't a complete lie. They had been in the car for hours.

"Yeah? Me too.", Tony said before glancing beside him to try to gauge exactly how serious the kid was being. When Peter didn't look terribly uncomfortable he continued. "We'll be there in about twenty minutes and unlike the icky communal bathrooms _I had to deal with_ when I lived on campus, _your room_ has it's own private one. I'll even let you go first." 

Out of options, Peter nodded and went back to looking out the window. After a few minutes of nothing but the radio playing between them, Peter turned it off. "Can you tell me more about what it was like when you were at MIT?", Peter asked with a shaky smile. He was sure he already knew every story by heart at this point but having the voice of his surrogate father fill the car was pleasant and made him feel more at ease.

It wasn't much longer before they arrived it and getting everything in order was a quick affair. They were soon navigating their way through the unfamiliar building and into Peter's assigned dorm. Tony had been able to secure him a private room. It was quaint, with a twin bed and small dresser on one wall, a desk on another. If the room was small then the bathroom was tiny. There was barely enough room to turn around in it and all it was equipped with was a toilet, a sink, and a small walk-in shower. 

They didn't spend much time in there. They simply gave it a once over, made use of the cramped bathroom and left for the cafe lunch, Tony had promised. Upon return, they started carrying all of Peter's things through the crowded hallways. Tony made the bed while Peter started putting all of his clothes into the provided drawers. Then, as he was unzipping his backpack to start piling the text book's Tony had already purchased for him onto the desk, he spotted a box wrapped in red and gray paper and pulled it out. "What do you have there, Pete?", Tony asked from where he was now seated on the bed. He looked legitimately curious meaning that it must have been something from May. 

After some further examination, he found a small handwritten note on the side. ' _Found these in your desk and thought you might want them'._ Unsure of what it could be, he carried it over to the bed and sat beside Tony. Inside was a three-fold picture frame and in each slot was one of the images he'd set aside a few days earlier. He'd thrown them in his desk with the intention of showing them to Tony but had instead forgotten about them completely. Smiling, he brushed his fingers over the first image. "That's me and my dad.", he said before moving on the to the middle frame. "That's my Uncle Ben. This was maybe five or six years after my parents died?..." Tony nodded his head and smiled. He almost felt honored to have a place in a frame that seemed to be dedicated to all of the most important men in Peter's life. "...and well, you know that picture but look... my smile hasn't changed at all."

"Nope. It's exactly the same.", Tony readily agreed. "I'm going to miss that smile."

Peter held his breath for a moment. That was the first time that the man had indicated that he would miss him. Not that there was any doubt. There had been times when Peter had gone somewhere with Ned's family for a few days and Tony never failed to tell him how much he was missed while he was gone. He guessed that they had spent so much time discussing his own fear of loneliness that the man had been hesitant to mention his own. "I'll call you every day, Tony. We can video chat right?", Peter said with as much of a smile as he could muster.

"Of course.", Tony said as he wrapped his arm snuggly around his boy. "It doesn't have to be every day though. You're going to be busy."

Peter shook his head. "Not too busy to call you. ... and May and Pepper." 

Sighing Tony planted a kiss right on the side of Peter's head. "I don't what you feel obligated. Call whenever you want to. No one will be upset if you get wrapped up in other stuff and forget once in a while, yeah?"

Swallowing back the emotion that was trying to creep its way into his voice, Peter nodded and got up to placed the frame on the desk. "Okay.", was all he could get out before he went back to unpacking. 

Once everything was in its place, Tony sighed heavily as he started collecting all of the bags and boxes that would be going back with him. "It's getting late, kid. I'm going to need to go soon. You good? Have everything you need?"

"I think so. I kind of want to get one of those plastic bucket, drawer tower things at some point but this is good for now.", Peter said as he looked around the room. With his own things in it, it didn't look quite so foreign anymore and rather than feeling restrictive and suffocating, it felt cozy. 

"I can have one of those sent to you no problem. You'll have it in a day or two.", Tony said with a nod of his head. Peter was right, the room lacked storage. "I'm gonna go now, okay? Why don't you walk outside with me? Got your key and access code?"

Peter nodded and followed behind, carrying a few of the returning items. Once they had gotten Tony's car packed up, it was all Peter could do to not jump in the passenger side seat and refuse to get out but instead, he stood expectantly beside the driver's side door. Knowing exactly what his kid wanted, Tony held out his arms and smiled when Peter ducked down to tuck his head under his chin. "I love you, Buddy.", he whispered before breaking the embrace. 

Determined not to cry, Peter took a deep breath and let it out slowly before speaking. "Yeah, I love you too. You'll call me when you get home, right"

Tony climbed into his car and nodded his head. "I will. Now, you should get back inside, there's supposed to be a social tonight so you can get to know your housemates. You should go.", the man suggested. "Just, just try not to be up _too late_... alright?" 

"I'll sleep.", Peter returned though he wasn't sure if he was telling the truth or not. 

Tony nodded and started the car. There was an awkward moment where neither of them said anything before Tony bit the bullet started the good-bye process. "I need to head out. I'd say 'Go make me proud' but you already have.", he smirked. "I'll see you soon, kid." 

Before Peter could answer, Tony had rolled up the window and was starting to pull off. "Yeah, I'll see you soon.", he whispered to himself as he crossed his arms protectively over his chest and wandered towards the double glass doors. Then as he entered the access code and the doors clicked to unlock, he forced himself to smile. This was what he'd been waiting for. 


End file.
